You always hear how expensive it is to go to college, but it doesn’t have to be. Community colleges are an inexpensive option, and there are all kinds of scholarships and financial aid packages available to help pay for 4-year schools. Make sure you AND your parents work together to find out as much as possible about the cost of college and the kinds of financial aid available. Your guidance counselor and college financial aid offices can also help.

If you participate in College Knowledge, we’ll send you and your parents financial aid information and help you answer questions about paying for school.

• Research the kinds of financial aid available.
• Keep track of deadlines for applications.
• Narrow your college choices and find out what kind of financial aid is available at the school(s) you’re interested in. Also, find out how much these schools will cost to attend and use a financial aid calculator to figure out how much aid you’ll require.
• Make sure you know which forms to fill out and what you’ll need to send in to apply for aid.

Financial Aid Overview
Financial Aid or Student Aid is money that helps students pay for tuition, fees, books, and living expenses like food, housing, and transportation. Student aid is available to a wide variety of people. It’s a myth that a student has to be poor in order to qualify. You do have to show that you need help paying for college. Things like your family’s income, family size, and number of family members in college are used to calculate the amount of student aid you’ll qualify for.

What Kind of Financial Aid is Available?
There are four basic kinds of aid:

• Grants offer financial help based on a student’s need and/or grades. These do not have to be repaid.
• Scholarships are awarded based on a student’s achievement in a specific area; for instance, academic, civic, or athletic. Scholarships do not have to be repaid and are offered by all kinds of different organizations.
  
• Work-study employment is a job you have on campus or in the community, which helps you pay for college and which you usually get through the financial aid office at the school you’re attending.
  
• Loans are available for students or parents. This is money you borrow to help pay for college. Loans must be repaid after you graduate.
• For more information about financial aid, check out the California Student Aid Commission’s website or visit one of our partner colleges’ Financial Aid Office websites:

• College of the Redwoods
• Humboldt State University
• UC Davis

Resources

• College Knowledge Financial Aid Resources
  
• Use our Financial Aid Checklist to figure out what you and your parents need to do to apply.
  
• Use the Who Can Receive Federal and State Financial Aid? information sheet to see if you are eligible to apply.
  
• Local Scholarships are listed in a notebook available at every high school and public library in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. The notebook is updated by the Humboldt Area Foundation every January.

Links
U.S. Department of Education
This site is REALLY important, and you should begin your student aid research here. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a form you HAVE to fill out in order to get any kind of financial aid, and this is where it lives. The site also has lots of information about financial aid in Spanish and English, and lets you fill out the FAFSA application online.

California Student Aid Commission
This site is THE source for information on California financial aid. It lists all the programs in California that could help you pay for college.

U.S. News
Use this handy scholarship search form to find scholarships you qualify for and information about applying.

CollegeNet
This site has lots of information about different types of aid available and how to apply for each. You can also search for scholarships and apply for them online.

FastWeb.com
The ultimate in scholarship searches. You can enter personal information (hobbies, sports, clubs, etc.) and they’ll email you with up-to-the-minute scholarship information that applies directly to you.

Ed Fund
This site helps you plan for college and figure out how to manage your money once you get there. It helps you keep track of your student loans, and is an excellent resource if you’ll be using loans to pay for school.

FinAid
This great site has calculators that help you figure out how much college will cost, as well as financial aid and scholarship information. It’s very useful and helpful—a “must visit.”

WiredScholar
A comprehensive website which takes you from preparing for college to selecting the right school and applying. Most importantly it provides access to a free scholarship search engine that contains over 2.4 million scholarships.